Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2893: Humbling

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“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and glorify and honor the King of heaven. All his acts are just and true, and he is able to humble the proud.”

Why is humility such a desired and respected trait but not one we demand or require?  You know, it is possible.  It could be that we would adopt humility as a corporate and personal value that we work towards, be held accountable and evaluated against.  But, seldom in the corporate pantheon of values and principles do we see the word humility.  Maybe it is because our form of corporate structure is a zero-sum game.  There are limited positions, limited budgets, limited promotions, limited seats, limited benefits, etc.  All limited and not equally distributed so that some gain and win and others lose.  And only one person gets to run the whole show.  So acting and being humble runs against the grain of competition, self-promotion and self-preservation.  That said, we still admire and respect the humble and we can at least be sure that we recognize and reward it when we see it.

If a harsh and bad leader was driven to collapse and then after their recovery gave God the credit for healing them and humbling them into the recognition of their faults and erred ways well, it would likely be received with some skepticism because we would want to see their actions changed to really believe it had happened.  Well, it can happen.  Just read the account of King Nebuchadnezzar who went from top to bottom and back again.  And why? Because God humbled him over his pride.  It was not an easy lesson for him and it won’t be an easy one for us either if it take God to bring us to humility.  I read the account in Daniel as a cautionary tale for each of us so that we humble ourselves before we are “required” to do so.

Reference:  Daniel 4:37 (New Living Translation)